The Data Network is a new social media platform just for Star Trek fans and players. Users can follow each other and send messages to the network. The network was designed so that Star Trek fans had a unique place to go to share their thoughts, stories and experiences in the Star Trek universe. They appear to provide one place for Trekkies.

They also want to provide a place for gaming clans, fleets, and groups; have various fleets with their own accounts, and players will be able to inform other users of which fleet they belong too.

As part of their educational awareness for science and space, NASA has been running an online radio station on the web called Third Rock Radio. From the several hours of listening I’ve given it, the mix of music is really good and they’ve got good taste.

This is the Ludobots course which has an interesting method of student learning and participation requirements before being able to join in the bigger initiatives of the course, this is called the Discovery Track which you can learn more about in this video. The video outlines the 10 levels of work and participation with other students before becoming a ‘scientist’ asking and researching bigger questions in the robotics field.

There’s lot of coding opportunities, lots and lots of tutorial videos, you can also view the syllabus + assignments and much more.

The prerequisites for the Ludobots course requires nothing more than a beginner’s background in programming. While the assignments may take longer depending on your experience level, we believe that the step-by-step progression each assignment has makes it accessible enough to a wide variety of people.

The course works with a ranking system. At the first rank you just submit an assignment; if you receive a passing grade you move on to the second rank. At every rank beyond the first you must grade an assignment that you have already done, using a rubric on each assignment page, and receive a passing grade on that rank’s assignment.

Once you have received a passing grade on each assignment you can work on evolutionary robotics research with us. Essentially the ranking system is in place to make sure that contributors to our research can be trusted. If your contribution is validated by others — or you provide a sufficiently interesting hypothesis of your own that others pursue — we will include you as a co-author and all write up a research paper together.

The ludobots site is an experiment for us as well: we’ve never tried this before, so we’re very eager to see the results!